


Staircase

by clantail (ideallyqualia)



Category: Winterbells
Genre: Birds, Canon Universe, Cold Weather, Gen, Rabbits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-25 23:02:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12046140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ideallyqualia/pseuds/clantail
Summary: A bunny and a bird travel the sky together.





	Staircase

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spoke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/gifts).



Climbing the sky forever could've been an eternal punishment in another world, maybe a world where the gods lived, but the sound of bells was too distracting to alarm either of them. The chimes of the bells rung out only from the puffs of wind at first, until one of them touched a bell. The sound was familiar, like the jingling of a noisy toy in a cage, but it was also beautiful and new.

"What should we do?" Bunny asked quietly.

Bird touched a bell again. Like its chime, or in its place, a sudden wind blew, but it didn't chill them. It was a wind that drifted up, a warm draft. Bird could feel its memory in his wings from learning to fly for the first time.

"It feels like we need to go up," Bird said. That was how it started.

Bird flew lowly at first, regretting that he wasn't big enough to carry Bunny with him. Bunny climbed onto bells and jumped off from them, bouncing with the lightness of a ball. An invisible mountain loomed before them. Whatever force was gathering bells and slowly dropping them with expert gentleness had a great mysterious power, and the accumulation of each moment of this force was enough to build the presence of a mountain, so even if it wasn't a mountain, it was.

Sometimes Bunny fell. The snow below was so thick and soft that it never hurt, according to him, so Bird stopped worrying. The more important problem was getting to the top. It was more of a problem when they didn't know where it was; the staircase of bells started from the floor, but it didn't stop, ascending into the sky past the grey snow clouds.

Neither of them could gauge time, and they didn't feel hunger. The sun didn't rise or set beyond the thick clouds overhead. It didn't matter to them if time never passed, or if it passed like a dream; nothing changed the way the bells fell.

Each and every bell was the same. They had the same jingles, shapes, and colors. Whenever one of them touched the ground, it disappeared.

"I used to have a bell like this back home," Bird said.

"Exactly like this?"

"No, it looked nothing like it at all. It was smaller." Bird stretched his neck out to touch a bell, but it sunk into the snow. He nudged his beak into the ground and couldn't find it.

They continued to disappear, melting like snowflakes. Something about it clicked -- even if it was unbelievable, it felt right. They stopped digging and searching, and they tried to climb again, with Bunny bouncing along the bells and Bird flying alongside him, occasionally pushing him to the next bell. Sometimes Bunny stepped on him and used him like a bell. If he stood on his back for too long, they both fell.

On one climb, they managed to stay in the sky for hundreds of bells -- Bird kept track -- but they still had to fall down to the snow bank and start over.

"Can you fly to the top?" Bunny asked once they were on the ground again.

"But I don't know where it is." Bird refused to fly into the clouds alone. It was as acceptable as a bell melting.

One run of bells came in a straight line, hanging in the air right above each other. Bunny almost didn't notice, and he noticed too late, jumping from the first bell and preparing to crash into the second. He passed through instead.

It left him with a deep cold sensation, penetrating for a moment like a real wind. The bell sent him bouncing above to the next bell without waiting for him. By the time Bunny realized what happened, the entire column had been fulfilled, and he was falling.

Another string of bells were spaced so far apart that Bunny didn't think he'd make it. Bird dove under his feet to help him, but Bunny kicked off him so suddenly that Bird fell a few meters and squawked.

After a tumultuous round of bells left Bunny falling again, his feet found another bell on the way down, propelling him in another bounce. The farther they climbed, the more unused bells waited below, hovering with the reassurance of tree branches stifling a fall. That was how he learned to trust them.

The path changed each time. Every bell looked the same, but no two bells ever copied each other or made patterns. Even though they were heading to the top, it was easy to get lost in the identical patternless bells, and at the same time they were never bored. As they fell from a long climb, the drop continued for a mindless amount of time. Bunny spread his paws and imagined himself going up in flight instead.

That drop could've been an eternity, for all the timeless distance they passed. The moon loomed close in one instant and far away in the next. Nothing counted the amount of time for them when they climbed, and while nothing counted when they were falling, too, the sensation of jamming the two timeless pieces of journey together was as jarring as a soft landing. Finally they approached the ground again, and Bunny landed with his paws sinking into the snow, almost as if he was a bell, and he could disappear if he wanted.

Then they were climbing. Time passed at the same inexplicable pace, immeasurable, and the bells led them to the sky. The sky had few boundaries, as few as time, both something to reach for and something they were already traveling, close to the moon and stars. The moon lingered in and out of view between the clouds.

"Maybe they're stars," Bird said after they fell another time. "They come from the sky."

"But being far away is what makes them stars in the first place. These aren't stars." Bunny shook snow off his fur and set off to climb again.

**Author's Note:**

> (General A/N): Not looking for concrit; don't leave any.


End file.
